


THREEE: A Cakefic

by handschuhmaus



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Darth Plagueis - James Luceno
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Crack, Gen, but not that funny
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-16
Updated: 2014-05-16
Packaged: 2018-01-24 23:40:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1621214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/handschuhmaus/pseuds/handschuhmaus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>How many <strike>Nimons</strike> Sith have you seen today?</em>
  <br/><em>THREEE!</em>
  <br/><em>[But] he said we were the only two!</em>
</p>
<p>In which Hego Damask, naked except for a towel (he <em>was</em> freshly showered, thank you very much), is covered in the remnants of the GFFA analogue of an Italian cream cake and trussed up to Rugess Nome, also somewhat cake covered. And it is all the fault of Venemis. Well, strictly speaking part of it is down to a lackey's misinterpretation of his bad handwriting, but if Venamis had actually had his way, they'd be in a much worse situation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	THREEE: A Cakefic

**Author's Note:**

> Oh dear, I wrote more Plagueis crack. In the form of a Sith cakefic.
> 
> I'm still playing around with ideas for Tenebrous's characterization; note that here he is frustrated through the duration of the scene because of what he considers Venamis's ineptness. 
> 
> I really have no idea what Venamis is like, and Plagueis--well, he's indelibly influenced by my own notions of him, which are not entirely like Luceno's. Oh well.

Plagueis was exceedingly annoyed. He would readily swear that the last thing he remembered was exiting the shower--a proper wet one--and wrapping a towel around himself, and yet he had the overwhelming impression of _stickiness_. To add insult to injury (he also felt generally sore), there was a faint smell of coconut and cream cheese, with notes of other foods, wafting towards his nose. 

The Muun opened his eyes and could dimly make out the outline of a Bith silhouetted in a brightly lit window. Was this some stunt of Tenebrous's? As full awareness returned in a reluctant manner that suggested the normally astute Sith had been drugged, he realized that the stickiness he felt over the greater part of his body was frosting, intermixed with clumps of cake, and that in addition to still being clad only in his bath towel he was tied back to back to someone with intricate knots of rope. Said someone was of similar stature and in some ways probably similar general form as far as he could tell from where they were held tightly together by the ropes.

The obvious strategy, deprived of ready use of his hands (and not near dexterous enough with his toes nor sufficiently flexible to really use them anyway), was to manipulate the rope with the Force in order to untie the knots. Unfortunately, as soon as he reached out in the Force to try to sense the path of the rope, his concentration was entirely thrown by the Bith's moving from his observation window and throwing open the door. 

It was not Tenebrous, he could see now--although this Bith looked a great deal like him. In fact, he rapidly realized that Tenebrous was the individual trussed up with him. "Incompetent!" his master exclaimed bitterly. "And is this _cake_ I'm covered in?"

"Silence." the stranger said calmly but commandingly. "I am the true Sith Lord."

"Why am I covered in cake?!" Tenebrous demanded, seemingly ignoring the fact that he was tied up and back to back with Plagueis.

"Oh, that," the other Bith said menacingly. "--my assistant misread the instructions I left him, and decided it would be funny to bring you here, rather than the locale I actually specified."

"You aren't worthy!" Tenebrous exclaimed, completely ignoring Plagueis, even when the Muun pointedly cleared his throat at this juncture. "Such a mishap only drives home how it is not the Will of the Force for you to do this."

Plagueis winced involuntarily; he usually did when Tenebrous invoked the 'Will of the Force', given that they had subtly divergent outlooks on the topic and that his Master often took the opportunity of mentioning it to lecture him about his supposedly erroneous views.

"But you are at my mercy, Tenebrous. I am Darth Venemis, true heir of the Line of Bane." 

The Muun Sith Apprentice carefully began to gather the energy necessary for Force Lightning into his hand to be unleashed on this Venamis, but Tenebrous managed to startle him when he finally moved, and his concentration was thrown, the energy dispersing harmlessly. 

Tenebrous exclaimed bitterly, "I have not accorded you that title!"

"What is _meant_ to be happening here?" Plagueis intervened, a bit more solicitously.

"Oh-oh!" Venamis tutted. "Bit slow on the uptake, aren't you, _Muun_? Besides completely useless as a Sith and not worth the effort you'd take in the training."

"Now--!" Tenebrous spluttered, reacting to the implicit insult that he had given himself to a pointless task.

"Am I?" the Muun inquired pointedly, a subtle sarcasm in his voice that was likely anyways to be lost on the two Bith.

"This is not a proper means of deciding the succession!" Tenebrous objected, entirely ignoring his apprentice's cautious approach. 

"I think a bomb in a cave is quite the ideal manner," Venamis offered icily. For his part, Plagueis was beginning to believe that Venamis was a second apprentice of Tenebrous's, taken in defiance of the Rule of Two, and for all his intended violations this contradiction of actions against the older Sith's words grated on the apprentice. Still, he didn't entirely believe that such a scheme as Venamis's went against the spirit of the Baneite dictum, even if it was a considerable inconvenience to himself. Subtlety and scheming were, after all, fitting and proper tools for the Sith.

Tenebrous fumed silently for a few seconds in outrage at Venamis's statement, a sentiment not quite shared by Plagueis, before exclaiming a little shrilly, "Then _**why**_ am I covered in cake?!"

"Oh, that," Venamis said, in a far more flippant tone than he had used thus far. "As I mentioned, my assistant misread my instructions."

"An assistant!" the elder Sith repeated, with all the disdain that the topic deserved. "What did you _instruct_ them to cover me in? Poison?"

"They put the bomb in a cake, didn't they?" Plagueis queried dryly upon the thought occuring to him.

"Oh-ho!" Venamis taunted once more. "You think you're clever."

"Disgusting, debasing, and pointless," Tenebrous denounced, though why he chose those adjectives in particular the Muun could not say at all. Placing a bomb in a cake was hard to pull off and of questionable use but he wouldn't have said it was entirely pointless; and while being covered in cake was uncomfortable, sticky, and probably unsanitary, it was much less disgusting than a number of other substances. And what exactly was meant to be "debasing" about it, Plagueis hadn't a clue.

In any case, this disagreeable description seemed to serve merely as a filler for the period while the master Sith further considered the plan. "At what point did the opportunity arise for this _assistant_ of yours to so misinterpret your instructions?" he demanded, in a tone Plagueis had previously known him to use on incompetent builders in his public life as Rugess Nome. It was one of dangerous calm that most people would not guess hinted at the storm of castigation that was meant to follow. 

"What does that matter?" Venamis said airily, glaring at Plagueis menacingly. 

"Clearly you either made the inexplicably inept choice of handwriting the relevant communique, or you made an unlikely input error. Either way, the responsibility for your scheme's failure falls on you, for neglecting to allow for such an event," the Muun deduced disdainfully. 

"You meddlesome Muun!" Tenebrous exclaimed halfheartedly. His concentration was as clearly not in the mild censure, and as it so happened, he must have seen some success in undoing their bindings, for the ropes around Plagueis's torso abruptly fell slack. 

Venamis snapped "What are you doing?" with a panicked air that conveyed a failure to anticipate this event. But perhaps he was merely more obtuse than anyone calling themself a Sith had a right to be and had noticed only the smell--peculiarly--of burnt rope (not a choice Plagueis himself would have made, but then he _was_ a mere apprentice) and not the undoing of their bindings.

"Either come up with a properly conceived plan, or else challenge me in the traditional manner!" Tenebrous commanded, standing and wobbling a bit with having been bound and sitting on the floor for so long. This comment lent further evidence to his apprentice's working theory that he was, in fact, not the Bith's sole apprentice.

Plagueis, freed of the ropes, unfolded _himself_ to stand upright once more, quickly regaining his dignity unlike the yet unsteady Bith.

"You--" Venamis said melodramatically, pointing at the Muun, " _you_ have brought this calamity upon me!"

"Now that is complete and utter nonsense," Plagueis responded dismissively. "I have not interfered with your plans whatsoever, only perhaps pointed out their flaws." After a reflective pause, he added, "I hardly think this qualifies as a calamity anyway. A complete disaster as far as plans go, but there is thus far little actual damage done, and that largely to our own persons, having been covered in cake and apparently battered." 

The younger Bith only spluttered, as Tenebrous glared at him. 

"And you, of course, are clearly Tenebrous's second apprentice, in contravention of the Rule of Two--yes, I _know_ , don't _dare_ blaspheme Bane--" the Muun rolled his eyes, a gesture the Biths were not readily capable of, "but considering the state we are in and the embarrassing failure of your so-called plan, I suggest we go our seperate ways and regroup."

"I--" Venamis gasped. Adroitly capable of "menacing" he might be, he faltered when faced with unexpectedly sensible assessments of the situation at hand.

"I shall deal with you later," Tenebrous glowered, and briefly withheld breath from Venamis with a gesture of his hand, tossing his second apprentice to the floor still gasping for breath. 

The ambulatory older Bith motioned for Plagueis to follow him, but as they exited the room he interrupted the Muun's musings on where they might be and how suitable cake and a bath towel as attire would be wherever it was by saying, "And as for you, you let yourself get captured! So don't think you've done well today."

Plagueis considered but ultimately did not venture to point out that he hadn't made an attempt to attack Tenebrous today whatsoever; he did not think this gesture would be appreciated, and might well even be disapproved of as a failure to take the initiative for scheming behavior befitting of a Sith. 

After they reached a T in the corridor, Tenebrous eyed the Muun and made a disapproving expression. "You're to get yourself clean and clothed immediately; such behavior is almost as inappropriate for a Sith as Venamis's inept scheming." 

Plagueis tactfully refrained from pointing out that, while clothed, the Bith was also covered in cake and sticky frosting, and to compound the insult, his clothes were both more valuable and more prone to ruin by the fat in the icing than the Muun's bath towel. 

Tenebrous harrumphed a cursory farewell, if you could call it that between Sith, as he headed down the opposite corridor from Plagueis, and that was that.

**Author's Note:**

> ...There might be virtual cake or something if you can spot the references tucked into the dialogue. (Hint: They've something to do with that bit in the summary blurb.)
> 
> I'm still not sure I'm satisfied with the ending, and yes, there are a number of themes mentioned but not explored, but I'm not much for finishing things and so am not adept at bringing stories to a close. Meh.


End file.
